DeepSeek announced on Thursday a “significant” price hike, amid surging global demand for a new ultra-cheap model, which sparked debate over how the Chinese artificial intelligence start-up has delivered powerful performance at rock-bottom prices. A “significant increase” was expected, and users should plan their usage accordingly, DeepSeek added. The company’s plans for a major price hike underscore the challenges the Chinese start-up faces to maintain its aggressively low prices amid fierce competition, potentially clouding its reputation for being a champion for cost-effective AI. wrote AI developer Michael Guo in a social media post on Thursday, arguing that new American models including Meta’s Muse Spark and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Luna were competitive with DeepSeek models in both capabilities and price. DeepSeek’s new model rapidly gained traction in the global AI community for combining near-frontier capabilities with extremely low prices.